Musical epiphany / S.F. group uses rare collection of work for Christian concert

Tyche Hendricks, Chronicle Staff Writer

Published 4:00 am, Tuesday, January 6, 2004

Photo: MIKE KEPKA

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coro060006_mk.jpg Juan Pedro Gaffney has been spent a lifetime collecting long forgotten pieces of music from the Spanish speaking world.
Coro Hispanico de San Francisco, lead by Juan Pedro Gaffney, is a one-of-a kind choral group that researches and performs long-forgotten classical and folk music from throughout the Spanish speaking world. 1/3/04 in San Francisco MIKE KEPKA/The Chronicle less

coro060006_mk.jpg Juan Pedro Gaffney has been spent a lifetime collecting long forgotten pieces of music from the Spanish speaking world.
Coro Hispanico de San Francisco, lead by Juan Pedro Gaffney, is a ... more

Photo: MIKE KEPKA

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coro060011_mk.jpg Juan Pedro Gaffney conducts his profesional group, Conjunto Nuevo Mundo during a Saturday moring practice. Coro Hispanico de San Francisco, lead by Juan Pedro Gaffney, is a one-of-a kind choral group that researches and performs long-forgotten classical and folk music from throughout the Spanish speaking world. 1/3/04 in San Francisco MIKE KEPKA/The Chronicle less

coro060011_mk.jpg Juan Pedro Gaffney conducts his profesional group, Conjunto Nuevo Mundo during a Saturday moring practice. Coro Hispanico de San Francisco, lead by Juan Pedro Gaffney, is a one-of-a kind ... more

Photo: MIKE KEPKA

Musical epiphany / S.F. group uses rare collection of work for Christian concert

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The crystalline voices of the altos and sopranos seeped through the tall windows of the Sanchez School auditorium and out into the dark street, one recent night.

Inside, a dozen members of the Coro Hispano de San Francisco warmed up their vocal chords on "En Belén ha de nacer," a Peruvian folk song about the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem.

The women's singing was interrupted by their conductor, Juan Pedro Gaffney, who snapped his fingers to emphasize the rhythm.

"Los silencios son importantes. Get off the note when the music says to," he said, switching seamlessly between English and Spanish.

Gaffney was rehearsing the bilingual group for its annual Día de los Reyes concert series to celebrate Three Kings Day. The holiday, also known as Epiphany, falls on Jan. 6, the day, in Christian tradition, when the wise men arrived in Bethlehem from the East bringing gold, frankincense and myrrh to honor the newborn Jesus.

"We're hanging on to the old ways, where Christmas does not begin until Noche Buena (Christmas Eve) and goes on through Día de los Reyes to Candelaria on Feb. 2, the presentation of the infant Jesus at the temple in Jerusalem," he said.

This weekend's concerts will begin with a candle-lit procession and include music ranging from the Renaissance to the 20th century, from Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela, Peru and Spain.

For 28 years, the Coro Hispano has been researching and performing little- known classical and folk music from throughout the Spanish-speaking world. But now the Bay Area chorus -- believed to be the only one in the country devoted to this repertory -- is struggling to survive.

Though the Coro operates on a shoestring budget, its work has met with critical acclaim."They are deserving of a lot of credit," said Eugene Rodriguez, director of Los Cenzontles, an East Bay center dedicated to preserving traditional Mexican folk music.

"There's a Latin American accent (to the music), which is increasingly different from what was going on in Europe," said Harris, who has performed with the Coro for 12 years. "There's a different flavor because composers start to appropriate African and indigenous phrasing and rhythms. So you get good Baroque music, but unlike anything written anywhere else in the world."

The Coro includes a community chorus as well as a core of paid professional vocalists and instrumental musicians, known as the Conjunto Nuevo Mundo.

"It's so exciting, as a singer with a mix of Latin American ethnicities, to be able to sing this music," said Claudia Landivar, whose father is Bolivian and mother Colombian. "It's not easy to find, and, believe me, I was looking for it."

With a graying ponytail flying and two pairs of black-framed glasses perched comically askew on the end of his nose, Gaffney, 65, poured his energy into the rehearsal.

"Try to get the swing of the thing," he told the singers. "That's part of the fun of contrapunto."

By his own reckoning, Gaffney is 92 percent Irish Growing up in the Mission District, he was immersed in both Irish and Latino culture.

His father, Edward M. Gaffney, represented San Francisco in the state Assembly for two decades. The younger Gaffney and his five siblings were raised in a stately home at Sanchez and 16th streets where music was central.

At the age of 6, he began his singing career as a member of the boys' choir at Mission Dolores, the church in which he was baptized and where the Coro would later be launched.

With a passion for social justice, he worked in the urban slums in the 1960s. While there, he found that Latin America had a tradition of classical music dating back centuries.

"There was a school of composers in Venezuela in the late 1700s, and the music was still being performed," he said. " It sounded astonishingly like Haydn."

Back in the United States, Gaffney became music director at St. Mary's College, founded the Coro Hispano in 1976, and eventually made his way to Stanford University to earn a master's degree in music. Gaffney runs the Coro out of a garden apartment in the Mission District home he grew up in. The five- room flat is a trove of musical history, with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves crammed with scholarly books, CDs, rare musical manuscripts, and even a microfilm archive of ancient music from the Mexico City cathedral.

When he's not rehearsing, Gaffney spends hours each day researching and arranging music, and, with the help of his wife, Joyce, drumming up money to keep the operation going. Though they are the Coro's artistic director and executive director, respectively, neither of them takes a paycheck from the chorus any longer.

"We're threatened with financially perishing, like so many arts groups up and down the state," said Gaffney.

In order to tackle their debts and bring their scattered family closer together, the couple has regretfully decided to sell their 1917 home.

But Gaffney remains focused on the beauty and spirituality of the music and the Día de los Reyes tradition.

The Coro's singers are equally enthusiastic about their upcoming concerts, but concerned for the future of the chorus.

"This music is a way to share something about these cultures and this history -- what's beautiful and sorrowful about it," said Landivar. "If the Coro couldn't continue ... it would be a loss to the greater community because this is such a rare thing."

Concert series

The Coro Hispano de San Francisco and Conjunto Nuevo Mundo present their 17th annual Día de los Reyes concert series on Friday at 8 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church, 1140 Cowper St., in Palo Alto; Saturday, 8 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker Church, 1640 Addison St., in Berkeley; and Sunday, 3 p.m., at Mission Dolores Basilica, 3321 16th St., in San Francisco. Tickets are $20 general admission, $15 for seniors and students. Children under 18 are free. Tickets can be purchased at the door or in advance. Call (415) 431-4234.

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